Malibu City Council Assesses Disaster Preparation Shortcomings

• Members Allocate Funding for Preliminary Improvements as Review Continues

BY BILL KOENEKER

As smoke and fire raced toward Malibu City Hall and quickly cut off power, the municipality’s emergency operations center had to be moved out of the Stuart Ranch Road offices onto the Pepperdine University campus after power failures that Sunday morning closed down the EOC.

Malibu City Council members last week at a special meeting said they did not want that to happen again and allocated $200,000 for power equipment and other supplies to rectify the situation.

Council members also explored whether city officials should have satellite phones or other hardware for emergencies. They instructed the city manager to use his discretion in spending the money.

City Manager Jim Thorsen acknowledged there were “a couple of issues” during the fire and suggested he would use the funds to shore up “the weakest links.”

Thorsen said he and his staff would look at not only acquiring a generator to power the EOC, but purchasing an additional unit.

Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Brad Davis indicated the city does have back up generators, but none of them are set to automatically go on when the power goes out. Thorsen said an automatic system is required.

Council members indicated they wanted to see the city’s power problems and any other obvious emergency preparations taken care of immediately.

Councilmember Andy Stern disagreed with the majority, saying there should be a study before money was turned over. But the measure passed on a 2-1 vote, with the approval of Councilmembers Sharon Barovsky and Pamela Conley Ulich. Mayor Jeff Jennings and Councilmember Ken Kearsley were absent.

There were other lessons that city officials should have learned from last January’s Malibu Road fire as they had been previously addressed.

“We knew Charter might go out. We decided last January to get a television [satellite] dish and we could watch what the media broadcast. We did not lose television,” added Davis, who acknowledged that the city was without its cable broadcast television on channel three on Charter.

Davis said the city’s radio station, which does not perform very well during the best of times, performed poorly during the fire.

Thorsen said he wants to look at upgrading the signal tower for better radio communications. “Maybe we will get a tower on one of the islands,” he added.

Davis said, in the meantime, he would suggest that if folks want to get their information via radio, they stay tuned to one of the all-news stations such as KNX.

The EPC said the city was most successful in getting information out via the telephone hotline.

“It does not need a lot of technology. We had our first information out by 6 a.m.,” he added.

The city official also explained some of the evacuation procedures taken by the city. He said a facility was set up at the Trancas end of Zuma Beach. “We were telling people to go to that side of the beach,” he noted.

Davis said the city was not in the loop when Agoura Hills High School was tapped for a Red Cross Center. “We said we need Malibu to be in on it. We said Malibu High School should be designated as an evacuation center,” he said.

Thorsen indicated that the city’s emergency call system was not activated. “We had already evacuated the streets. We were already past that point and did not activate it,” he added.

The city’s emergency call system is operated by a private company, American Emergency Notification, which operates a computerized phone system that can reach thousands of numbers an hour, providing detailed emergency information. The system can leave voice mail and answering machine messages and also can redial if there is a busy signal or no answer.

“We are not sure the company can provide what we need. We are going to be looking at that,” added Thorsen, who explained that the city wants to look at developing more of an e-mail warning system, but didn’t explore the power concerns related to that.

Role of Downed Power Lines in Start of Malibu Wildfire Is Being Investigated

• Condition of Southern California Edison Poles Targeted for Scrutiny

BY HANS LAETZ

Although fire investigators have yet to release an official report, the first fire crews to arrive at the scene of last week’s Canyon Fire pinpointed a splintered Southern California Edison Co. wooden pole as the apparent source of the fire that threatened eastern Malibu with destruction.

If the pending official investigation confirms that, this would be the second time in 11 years that power lines in or near Malibu Canyon have failed in windstorms, both times causing calamitous fires.

The Office of the State Fire Inspector has sent investigators to Malibu to see if some of the power poles in the canyon are old and spindly, and stressed by heavy loads and winds, possibly making them susceptible to failure.

“You can see from the burn pattern, it spread from that line,” yelled a firefighter from Los Angeles County Engine 89, pointing through the wind and ash in fire-filled Malibu Canyon about two hours after the pole was snapped by estimated 100-mph wind gusts.

Twelve hours later, after the fire had moved on, the splintered poles were photographed where they fell on the roadside, just north of the old Sheriff Honor Camp turnoff above Rindge Dam. It appeared that the poles had snapped in the wind, as they did not burn in the fire.

The poles were removed the next day by Edison crews working around the clock, in terrible wind and smoke conditions, to rebuild the circuit and clear the road of two miles of tangled lines and poles. Numerous poles fell on or near the canyon road during the windstorm and resulting fire last weekend, officials said.

Calls to Southern California Edison’s news office this week were not returned. Los Angeles County fire officials said their investigation was continuing.

Back in 1996, the Calabasas-Malibu fire was sparked by a power line dropping from SCE poles south of U.S. 101, east of Malibu Canyon-Las Virgenes Road, and about six miles north of last week’s failure. The ’96 fire injured 11 people, including six firefighters overrun by a sudden flashover in Corral Canyon.

Last week’s fire cost $5.8 million to extinguish, and injured three firefighters. Damage estimates are not yet tallied, but parts of Malibu were evacuated and local schools and businesses were closed for up to a week.

The state investigators are assisting LAC investigators to determine the cause of the Canyon Fire, said Cal Fire’s chief of law enforcement, Dave Hillman, from the emergency command post in Sacramento.

“Our role in the investigation is purely to investigate the cause of the fire,” he said Tuesday.

Spindly-looking power poles along Malibu Canyon Road have been a source of concern for several months for some residents, including Ed Meyer, whose house high above the canyon on Piuma Road overlooks the sinuous route below. Meyer said he has been warning Edison for several months that its older poles were falling over.

“Those lines were hanging out over the road for months,” Meyer said. “The company has replaced some of the poles with new ones, and put up a steel pole in one place, but a lot of those old poles are down there still.”

Meyer is most concerned with wooden poles that anchor a span of wires that cross the entire canyon on one reach, more than a quarter mile from Malibu Canyon Road up to the summit on Piuma. “Those poles swing like crazy in the winds.

“This whole system has been weakened for years, and I think there was so much tension on the whole thing that it snapped and pulled the whole string down,” he said this week.

City officials said they wanted to see an official report, but said power poles are probably not designed to withstand the winds of 100 mph that swept down the canyon that Sunday morning.

“Those wooden poles are 19th century technology,” said Malibu City Councilmember Ken Kearsley. “We have a choice: we can underground [the lines] at the cost of a million dollars a mile, or we can put them on steel poles.”

But Kearsley said it was important not to rush to judgment on the issue. “Those were hundred-mile-an-hour winds,” he cautioned. “To what extent of wind do you plan for?”

Meyer has more than a passing interest in the string of power poles in Malibu Canyon that for years had been tilting over at an angle: his home was nearly burned in last week’s fire.

“I lost two acres of succulents next to my house, which I foamed.” Meyer said. “You’ve gotta foam up here to save your house.”

“But this was no act of God, they have been neglecting this for years,” Meyer said.

Malibu Slowly Returns to the Routines of Daily Life after the Canyon Fire

• Signs of Recovery Are Evident Throughout the Community

BY HANS LAETZ

As fire investigators concentrated on the possible failure of a power line in Malibu Canyon, students returned to classes, construction crews labored to remove debris, and life in the Malibu fire area began to take on a more routine status.

Although no local loss estimate has been tallied yet, the Los Angeles County Fire Department says it took $5.8 million in public funds to extinguish last week’s fire, tentatively blamed on 100 mile-per-hour winds that snapped power poles in Malibu Canyon.

Initial official damage assessments missed some classroom damage at Our Lady of Malibu Catholic School, and two businesses closed by fire at the shopping center: the First Bank and Trust Company’s branch, and the city’s newest Starbucks outlet, both red-tagged due to roof damage.

Construction crews at the stricken Malibu Colony Shopping Center on Monday finished demolishing a clock tower and several sections of roof that roared with flame during the Oct. 21 Canyon Fire, which burned 4566 acres and destroyed 12 structures and damaged another 20 in Malibu.

School children returned to their classrooms at Webster Elementary and Our Lady of Malibu schools Monday, and found the two neighboring schools on Winter Canyon freshened up thanks to heroic volunteer efforts.

Two classrooms at the parochial school burned. A computer lab in a trailer was destroyed and the ceiling of the 7th/8th grade classroom was charred.

A large crew of demolition experts labored all week at Our Lady of Malibu to remove debris. “They have to redo the ceiling in that classroom,” said parent volunteer Scott Schoenberger. “That class will meet in the Fellowship Hall this week.”

Across the street at Webster, “we had about 30 parents put in a five-hour workday Sunday, to clean the yard up,” said Webster’s PTA president, Dorothy Reinhold. “We removed anything and everything that looked burned.”

Several truckloads of burned trees, playground equipment and a destroyed art-project shed had to be carted off. By Monday, the only sign of fire was the singed trees ringing the campus.

Parent Catie Norris had arranged for the Sylmark Corporation to donate 25 air purifiers to remove any lingering smell from the classrooms.

Other than the landscaping, only two temporary storage rooms were lost to flames at Webster. “Stunning,” was the assessment from principal Phil Cott, as he watched pupils arriving for class Monday after a week’s closure.

At City Hall, it was business as usual this week, the power back on and employees processing permit requests. The downstairs offices were being painted over the weekend the fire struck, further complicating an almost Murphy’s Law set of circumstances that included the municipal offices being surrounded by fire, blacked out, its cable TV station off the air, its cable system down for four days, and its Internet servers dead.

“I’m very, very proud of the city staff’s response” that Sunday morning, said City Councilmember Andy Stern. “(Administrative services director) Reva Feldman literally drove through flames to get to City Hall, and when she got in, it was filled with smoke.”

Mario Reyna, the city’s computer administrator, also braved surrounding flames to retrieve hard drives with vital records, Stern said. The leased building itself did not burn, although trees and brush on all four sides did.

Craig George, the city’s environmental and building safety manager, said Monday that “not one” septic or sewage system failed anywhere in Malibu due to the fire. He and other staffers are compiling a tally of damages within city limits but have not completed it yet, said city manager Jim Thorsen.

Los Angeles County Health Department officials put out a news release last week that said the fire had caused a “minor” spill of 20,000 gallons of treated sewage into the ocean at the Malibu Bay Club apartments, located near County Line.

That prompted several news agencies to mistakenly report that beaches in Malibu were polluted by sewage systems incapacitated by the fire.

Verizon crews continued Monday to repair cables in the Civic Center area that were burned, but outages were reported only in actual burn areas. The Charter Communications connection to the outside world was reconnected as promised on Wednesday, restoring phone, Internet and local television service.

County Supervisors Unanimously Approve LCP for Santa Monica Mountains

• Malibu Repesentative on Board Gets OK for Two Dozen Changes to Planning Document

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved the Local Coastal Program for unincorporated areas of Malibu and the rest of the Santa Monica Mountains at its meeting this week.

The board had met last week and continued the matter until this Tuesday when, on a 4-0 vote with Supervisor Gloria Molina absent, it approved the document.

Planners had recommended 30 policy changes to the document and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents this area, offered 24 more revisions.

“The LCP will dramatically reduce zoning densities, ban new residential and commercial development in Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas, prohibit new development within 50 feet of significant ridgelines, require thorough biological review prior to the issuance of any coastal development permit, reduce grading and site disturbance, dramatically limit the footprint of new development and preserve the free movement of wildlife throughout the Santa Monica Mountains Coastal Zone,” Yaroslavsky said of his revisions.

Those changes include prohibiting camp fires in the mountains, facilitating the rebuilding of homes destroyed in a disaster, and banning new development on slopes of 50 percent or greater.

That livestock containment facilities would be grandfathered with respect to mandated setbacks; the maximum size of a building site in watersheds would be limited to 10,000 square feet; and Arizona crossings would be phased out are some of the approved changes.

Yaroslavsky’s motion was approved by the board and incorporated with staff recommendations.

A county planner indicated the department would incorporate these revisions into the document and then it will be brought back as a consent item for final approval.

At that point, the LCP will be submitted to the California Coastal Commission for certification. That meeting is not expected to take place until the middle or end of 2008.

When the last of the public speakers had testified, the focus was on what is called backyard horse boarding. Additionally, speakers were critical of what they called the “commercialization of the mountains” as the LCP allows bed and breakfast inns in certain zones. Some heated discussion focused on issues related to the land use designation of Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area.

Equestrians showed up in full force at the meeting, some to counter what they perceived as an anti-horse stance by a group that got involved late in the planning process and warned that some of the provisions of the LCP represented a loosening of restrictions.

Jacky de Haviland, the president of Citizens for a Better LCP, insisted her group and the equestrians are not that far apart. “I think the equestrians don’t realize how close we are. They decided we are the enemy. We never said anything about keeping horses out of the mountains,” she said.

Horse owners, from the onset, had urged county planners to highlight equestrian uses because of the historical significance of horses in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Planners acknowledged in keeping with the spirit of coastal access, equestrian uses would play a role in the LCP process, but insisted the regulations about horse boarding were not loosened in the planning document.

De Haviland indicated they now want to see restrictions tightened up. She and others praised Yaroslavsky’s contributions to the document, but said that other issues would need to be addressed before the California Coastal Commission when it takes up the matter of certifying the plan.

Another issue that surfaced on the day of the hearing was a published report that the coastal agency would take issue with the county’s stance on ESHAs.

County planners had early on acknowledged that they were treating ESHAs differently than what the Coastal Commission had compelled the City of Malibu to implement, but encountered no discouragement from the state agency until this week. “We disagree with the Coastal Commission,” said a county planner.

Yaroslavsky insists that because of the Santa Monica Mountains’ “environmental sensitivity, susceptibility to wildfires and geological hazards, the proposed LCP unequivocally establishes the principle that resource protection and public safety have priority over development.”

Double Fatality Puts Malibu’s Kanan Dume Road in the Spotlight—Again

• Authorities Are Stymied by Drivers Who Do Not Use Arrestor Bed to Stop Runaway Vehicles

BY ANNE SOBLE

A fiery collision involving a gravel-filled double trailer truck and two automobiles at the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Kanan Dume Road claimed the lives of two men—including Malibu resident William Weissberg—and resulted in serious injuries for Dave Wise, a veteran county firefighter.

Flames from the crash could have ignited office complexes adjacent to the bluff where the runaway truck exploded about 10 a.m. last Wednesday, just as wildfire-weary Malibuites were getting the smoke and ashes out of their systems.

The driver of the big rig was identified by authorities as Hovik Oganes Papikyan, 34, of Glendale.

County Sheriff’s Traffic Sgt. Philip Brooks said Papikyan was traveling illegally on Kanan Dume, which is closed to vehicles over 8000 pounds with more than two axles.

The sheriff’s department spokesperson said a preliminary review of accident data indicates the truck driver was traveling about 70 mph when he may have experienced brake failure on the road’s steep grade. He ran the red light at the PCH intersection, crashing first into the Mercedes driven by Weissberg, then into Wise’s Mercury SUV.

After it hurled over the two vehicles, the truck smashed into the embankment, shifting the gravel load forward, as well as sending it flying into the air, and killing the driver, according to Brooks.

A question repeatedly asked at the accident scene was why Papikyan did not use the 800-foot runaway vehicle arrestor bed. The emergency lane was installed in 1987 following a rash of similar truck accidents, including two in a three-week span that claimed three lives. At that time, there was a community outcry that the intersection was a safety hazard.

The arrestor bed, which is 16 feet wide and 2.5 feet deep (filled with gravel and sand), is bounded by a side concrete railing and terminates with a phalanx of 72 barrels—each filled with 1400 pounds of sand—that serve as impact-reducing devices.

There are 21 signs alerting drivers to the road’s steep grade, the need to check brakes, and the presence of the runaway vehicle lane, which has averted well over a dozen crashes.

One factor expected to be addressed in the accident report is that the last, largest warning sign was knocked down during the weekend before the accident by the nearly 100-mph winds that fueled the wildfire that started Sunday, Oct. 21. That sign was not put back up until after the accident.

Another issue expected to be raised is the concern voiced by Brooks that truck drivers were violating the truck ban rather than taking the longer detours through Camarillo-Oxnard or Santa Monica that were mandated by the closure of Malibu Canyon Road due to the wildfire. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol personnel were taxed by the fire, and there was no way to step up law enforcement on the one canyon route that remained open.

William Weissberg, 58, the Malibuite who was killed in the crash, was not identified until this Monday. Weissberg was a Century City attorney who was married and lived in the Malibu Knolls area, one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by last week’s Canyon Fire. A colleague said Services for Weissberg were reportedly slated for this week at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park.

The east Malibu resident’s car was totally incinerated by the intensity of the fire at the crash scene. His name was withheld for five days because of the additional time required for identification and notification of next of kin.

At the wheel of the second struck vehicle, a white SUV, was a 25-year county firefighter, Dave Wise, who suffered a smashed foot that may require surgery, broken ribs, extensive bruising and possible head trauma.

Wise, 45, was pulled from his burning car by Ocle Martinez, who works in property management at the Point Dume Professional Center above the embankment that the truck drove into, and sheriff’s deputies who were among the first to respond to the scene.

The veteran firefighter, who has been released from the hospital and is recuperating at his home in West Hills, described the crash to the Malibu Surfside News: “I remember a sound of heavy metal, sparks, flying metal and debris, then I passed out...when I came to, there was fire all around me...my clothes were soaked with diesel fuel.”

He said that he still can’t believe that he “survived the [flames and fumes]. I am so grateful...” His wife, Penny, said simply that “he has a guardian angel...if the truck had hit the car an inch or two in either direction, Dave would be dead.”

Wise paused, then softly explained that when he was assigned to local Fire Station 99 two years ago, his was the second unit to respond when an overloaded double rig of roof tiles barreled through the same intersection. The light was green and the intersection was empty at the time.

The driver of that truck was killed but a passenger in the cab survived.

An intensive investigation of last Wednesday’s accident is expected to take several weeks or more, according to Brooks. In addition to questions about signage placement, investigators will try to determine the truck’s condition, what kind of training the driver had and whether he was directed to use Kanan.

The LASD spokesperson said it is possible that “damage to the truck is so intensive that the investigation may yield few, if any, clues.”

Brooks said the possibility that Papikyan panicked or froze at the wheel is not being ruled out.

A family member told Brooks that the driver spoke and read English. It is surmised that he knew he was on the road illegally and saw the signs about the runaway vehicle lane.

Why he ignored the arrestor bed and tried to turn onto Pacific Coast Highway, causing the truck to go into a centrifugal skid, may never be known.

• The Publisher’s Notebook •

Malibu Fire Aftermath: Nature Has to Heal

BY ANNE SOBLE

The aftermath of a major disaster is fraught with the extremes of every human emotion. When the grieving has stopped, as it should, the process of recovery begins. Whether in the raised voices of the congregants of a burned-out church or the more personal realization by someone who has lost every material possession that things may be gone but memories last forever, humans have an infinite capacity to heal. Just as we reach out to help those who have been affected by the recent fire, so can we help nature heal from an event that has claimed not just acreage but wildlife habitat. Animals, large and small, have lost food and shelter, and this may result in an unfortunate increase in human interaction, not by choice but because it is unavoidable. From the deer herds of Malibu Canyon that have graced this newspaper’s cover, to the mountain lions who traverse miles in their wanderings, sightings may increase. Coyotes, raccoons and other mid-size animals may turn to human habitat as an alternative food source, but under no condition should wildlife be fed or otherwise acclimated to human contact. Extra precautions should be taken with family pets and other domestic animals.

Human patience can be sorely tested when nature is out of kilter. After the 1993 wildfire, when my ranch boundaries had been scorched by menacing flames and extensive (and extraordinarily successful) backfiring, I thought that every squirrel in the Malibu hills had sought refuge inside my gates. My livestock feed bill almost doubled because as soon as grain was put out, dozens of squirrels came out of nowhere to ravage it. New feed containers helped, but time solved the problem. Within a few months, the squirrels’ natural habitat was restored and they moved on. If rodents or other small critters become a short-term problem, there should be absolutely no consideration of using rodenticides. Be patient, and give nature a chance. There may be some inconvenience, or even some loss, but poisoning the wildlife food chain will do far more damage and ultimately create a far greater imbalance.

The shortage of water in wilderness areas during the current drought has been exacerbated by the recent fire. My personal exception to the prescriptive against wildlife interaction (frowned upon in some quarters) involves providing water sources, making certain they are not located where human encounter is likely. I have submerged horse troughs in my backcountry (well outside the fenced corrals and residential areas) that are kept filled with well water. Those who reside in more urbanized areas of Malibu might opt to fill a bird bath, or consider hanging a hummingbird feeder, as their contribution to thirsty critters. Whatever we do, we must not add to the plight of the already scarred land and prevent it from coming back on its own.

Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Puts Renewal of Parcel Taxes on February Ballot

BY HANS LAETZ

Malibu voters will not only decide on a presidential favorite on “Super Tuesday,” but will vote in the February 5 election on whether to retain a $346-per-parcel real estate tax for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

The vote on whether to extend the parcel tax will come on the heels of a controversial, last-minute decision by the school board two weeks ago to strip half of the bond money recommended by district staff to build new classrooms at Malibu High School, and divert those funds to replace badly dilapidated sections of Santa Monica High School.

The parcel tax renewal is viewed as critical by school backers, who say it has made the hiring of 50 teachers possible. The special tax makes up for inadequate funding from state property and income taxes, and is credited by the district for the stellar marks that students at its 17 campuses get on state tests.

Class sizes in core classes such as reading, writing and mathematics are reduced using teachers hired by parcel tax receipts, and the entire music and arts programs rely on the parcel tax.

A poll taken by the district of voters found support hovering around 70 percent for the tax measure. The poll was careful to point out that taxes would not go up if the parcel tax measure is passed by 67 percent of the electorate—it will only extend taxes that have already been approved by the voters.

But the matter will go before the Malibu electorate as it reacts to a last-minute decision by the school board to cut in half the recommended $27 million Malibu High construction budget, and instead recommend that $13.5 million of that total be channeled to bigger construction needs at the district’s 70-year-old Santa Monica High School.

Board president Kathy Wisnicki, the lone Malibu resident on the school board, was unable to attend the meeting due to an ankle injury. She told Malibu parents in an e-mail that “although the outcome was unfortunate, I believe that the district staff and I will be able to craft a solution that is acceptable to the Board and restore funding to our Malibu schools.”

Wisnicki wrote to assure parents that “district officials said Malibu parents should not assume that the entire $27 million proposed by district staff for Malibu High is lost, because as much as $40 million in bond funds is still uncommitted.”

Several Malibu High parents spoke at the meeting at Santa Monica City Hall, but were outnumbered by placard-waving Samohi parents concerned that Malibu was getting a much larger per-student share of construction monies than their kids. Nine of the 10 board members are Santa Monica residents, although 20 percent of the students attending district schools live in Malibu.

Malibu principal Mark Kelly said he also spoke at the meeting, and said afterward he found it “unfortunate that the Samohi parents pitted one group of kids against another.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Kelly said after the vote, “and the process that was set up to weigh and evaluate each project should not have been bypassed like that either.”

At issue is a proposal from district staff that $27 million be set aside for a new library at Malibu High, as well as a new science classroom wing to replace a substandard 40-year-old junior high classroom block. The board’s vote eliminated funding for the junior high classrooms.

Assistant Superintendent Mike Matthews, a former Malibu High principal, said the bond funding process has only just begun. “I want to assure Malibu residents that it is our goal and objective to get what is needed built at both of the schools.”

Matthews said district staff is only taking the first steps in finding joint-funding sources from other government agencies to subsidize multiple-use projects at both campuses, which he said will stretch construction budgets and further the district’s goal of integrating the two high schools more with surrounding communities.

The February vote will, if approved, combine two prior parcel taxes, Measure S and Measure Y, into one new tax, which has not been given a ballot designation yet. Like the prior taxes, property owners over 65 can choose to opt out of the tax (see separate story) by filing annually for an exemption.

Clock Stops on NorthernStar Plan to Convert Aging Oil Rig Northwest of Malibu into LNG Facility

• U.S. Coast Guard Raises Hundreds of Safety and Environmental Issues that Must Be Addressed

BY HANS LAETZ

A proposal for a liquefied natural gas terminal on a converted offshore oil rig off Ventura County has prompted nearly 400 questions from the U.S. Coast Guard, a “data gap” that could delay the project for months or years.

The Malibu Surfside News has learned that Coast Guard officials have questions about the proposed NorthernStar LNG terminal that go to the very heart of the proposal’s safety and operations plans, as well as whether it is even needed in the first place.

The Coast Guard has sent the company a list of 396 questions it needs answered before it can process the environmental study, and then decide on a license request, for the project called Clearwater Port. Similar questions cost BHP Billiton a three-year delay on its Cabrillo Port request, and that company’s inability to fully address its data gap list of just 120 questions was one of the reasons its proposed LNG terminal off Malibu was shot down last April.

In a letter obtained by The News, hundreds of questions were raised by the Coast Guard about safety aspects of the NorthernStar proposed project, ranging from how the LNG terminal would handle earthquakes, subsea landslides and high waves, to how the LNG ships would avoid killing whales.

The company had said it expected some questions to arise, and its officials said they expected the fast-track federal licensing “clock” to be stopped at some point. But the breadth and scope of the list of unanswered questions seemed quite broad even to LNG opponents, such as Susan Jordan of the California Coastal Protection Network.

“I’m stunned,” Jordan said when told of the list. She and other coastal activists have yet to see the letter’s details.

Kira Redmond, spokesperson for the Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, said the “long-term and potentially devastating impacts” of the proposal makes her group “gratified the Coast Guard has taken our concerns and others seriously, and stopped the clock to gather additional information.”

The SBC, an environmental group that champions environmental issues in the Channel Islands area, announced that it has hired the Environmental Defense Center, which played a major part in the defeat of Cabrillo Port, to employ scientists and environmental lawyers to oppose the project.

NorthernStar proposes to take out oil wells on the offshore rig and use the platform to warm up LNG that would be unloaded at two new floating docks it would build in 320 feet of water about 10 miles off Ventura. The oil rig’s wells would be taken out of production, abandoning about 2 million barrels of recoverable oil in the ground beneath it—one of the issues the Coast Guard wants NorthernStar to address.

As reported in The News three weeks ago, federal law prohibits taking an offshore oil platform out of production if petroleum can still profitably be recovered. With oil prices ratcheting up above $90 a barrel, the small oil company that currently owns the rig has resumed drilling for oil on the platform, known as Platform Grace, that NorthernStar wants to turn into an LNG regasification site.

The federal letter is a laundry list of concerns, most of them about the safety of the plan. The list notes that NorthernStar’s data about freighter traffic in the local area, one of the busiest sea lanes in the world, is more than five years old and out of date. It also notes that NorthernStar mistakenly said ships in the nearby coastal lanes are under Coast Guard traffic control, when they are not.

Some of the Coast Guard questions go to the very concept of locating an LNG terminal at a place where ships could drag their anchors across existing seafloor pipelines that carry crude oil from several platforms to refineries onshore. And it says the anchoring systems for floating docks in the high seas, with cables bolted to the ocean floor amidst crude oil and natural gas pipelines, need further explanations.

The federal letter asks why NorthernStar has not addressed two active earthquake faults reported in a 2007 geologic study, even though the federal government asked NorthernStar about them last February.

The Coast Guard letter notes that “the application lacks a list or map describing land uses along the proposed and alternative project locations, and information about sensitive land uses and their locations, particularly churches, schools, hospitals, day-care centers, etc.” Because the project proposes high-pressure gas pipelines through Oxnard neighborhoods, the government wants to know precisely how many structures would be in the hazard zone.

NorthernStar’s project manager, Billy Owens, said the questions “do not go to the soundness, but to the necessary detail to ensure that one understands the environmental protections that we will build into the plant.”

Owens said many of the posed questions are answered in other parts of the 3141-page application filed by the company last summer. Others, however, he said might take months of additional research, testing and study to answer.

Item 400, for example, asks the company to “demonstrate the need for natural gas (particularly LNG) as an energy source, providing information on the supply of, and demand for natural gas in California.” The Coast Guard asks NorthernStar to show why the new Costa Azul import terminal near Tijuana, with a capacity equal to one-tenth of the total demand on the west coast of North America, can’t handle import needs.

“That will probably be the biggest piece of work we have to do,” Owens said. “That is a critical task item that everyone is yelling about.”

Opponents of the project say the severe environmental impacts of the proposed oil rig conversion outweigh the benefits for what could become an expensive, underused competitor to the Baja LNG terminal, owned by the San Diego natural gas trading firm Sempra, parent company of the Southern California Gas Company.

The Coast Guard also wants to know how NorthernStar computed potential fog banks that might be generated by the operation of the ambient air vaporizers, which will act like huge refrigerator coils in moist marine air.

“We are hardly going to see any fog out there from this project,” Owens said. In perfectly still air, he said water vapor would cascade off the platform and form a circle of fog 6-8 feet above the water and 65-70 feet in diameter.

“We’re not going to enshroud the platform and the carriers in fog,” he vowed.

Among other questions, the Coast Guard wants to know:
• what the converted oil rig will look like to persons on nearby boats and on the shore,
• how tall the facility will be,
• how much smog will be generated, and how that was calculated.
• why this oil rig was picked, and why the project wouldn’t be better in another location,
• whether the high-pressure gas pipelines can withstand underwater landslides and river-flood rocks sweeping down from the nearby mouth of the Santa Clara River,
• what the effect of supercold water on plankton and other creatures will be, a subject brought up but not addressed in earlier letters,
• what the emergency response plan for pipeline leaks on shore will be,
• why no substantive risk assessment discussion for the onshore pipeline was provided,
• why there is no discussion of potential safety hazards for introducing the imported gas directly into the existing natural gas system,
• why the application does not address the impact on tourism, and
• what the historical wave heights at the site are.

Owens said it could be two-to-three weeks before the company “gets a handle on just how deep they want us to go on all this.”

The NorthernStar proposal, 35 miles northwest of Malibu, is one of two LNG terminals proposed for the local area. A second, proposed by Woodside Natural Gas for 21.8 miles offshore Point Dume, is proceeding through the regulatory process several weeks behind the NorthernStar plan.